Smoking, no smoking

L’aventure avait bien commencé. La photo du Lance Corporal du Marine Corps James Black Miller, cigarette au bec dans un visage marqué par le combat, au siège de Falloujah en novembre 2004, était une aubaine pour la ‘com’ (les relations publiques, le virtualisme). La photo symbolisait le jeune homme d’Amérique, épuisé par le terrible combat mais assuré que ce combat est juste et que l’Amérique est «  a force of the good » ; John Wayne Junior à Falloujah, avec l’avantage que James Black Miller était un vrai. (Wayne ne fit la guerre que dans les studios. Sa réputation était faite. Lorsqu’il visita un hôpital du Corps des Marines, à Honololu en 1944, les blessés des batailles de Pacifique le huèrent et l’obligèrent à battre en retraite, — cette fois comme un vrai soldat…)

A la différence de la carrière de Wayne, celle de James Black Miller a bifurqué. Le jeune homme a mûri comme on mûrit en Irak, — très vite. Miller fume beaucoup moins et il est, aujourd’hui, contre la guerre. Cela n’était pas dans le scénario.

The Independent du 2 février (repris par Truthout) nous instruit sur cette triste affaire, — ou comment le système, de Falloujah à la communication, nous détruit : « But 15 month after that photograph appeared in more than 100 US newspapers, the 21-year-old is back from Iraq, back on civvy street and he is talking about the trauma of what he experienced and the scars he still bears, physical and mental. The once unquestioning Marine is now also questioning whether US forces should be in Iraq.

» The mental health experts who are treating him call his condition post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but Mr Miller describes it in more immediate language: nightmares, sleeplessness and periods when he will “blank out”, not knowing where he is or what he is doing. “I could tell you stories about Iraq that would make the hair stand up on the back of your neck,” he said. “And I could tell you things that were great over there. But that would still not tell you what it was actually like. You had to be there and go through it to really understand.” (…)

» Mr Miller, who received an honourable discharge last November after military psychologists decided he would be a threat to himself or his colleagues if he continued to serve, said there remained a stigma about mental health issues. He told Knight Ridder Newspapers: “I want people to know that PTSD is not something people come down with because they are crazy. It's an anxiety disorder, where you've experienced something so traumatic that you're close to death.” Mr Miller's photograph was taken in November 2004 during the battle for Fallujah, the insurgent stronghold. The two-week operation resulted in the deaths of up to 50 US troops, an estimated 1,200 insurgents and an unknown number of civilians.

» The former Marine says he now questions the US tactics and believes troops should have been withdrawn some time ago. He said: “When I was in the service my opinion was whatever the Commander-in-Chief's opinion was. But after I got out, I started to think about it. The biggest question I have now is how you can make a war on an entire country when a certain group from that country is practising terrorism against you. It's as if a gang from New York went to Iraq and blew some stuff up and Iraq started a war against us because of that.”  »

Mis en ligne le 3 février 2006 à 05H36